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I believe your options are "no one dies", "half the crew + Kelly dies", or "everyone but Chakwas dies".

Which is pretty funny, because I imagine rolling in two weeks after the abduction and finding to Shepard's enormous surprise that Chakwas has somehow held out. Broke one of those blenders, used the acid to dig a burrow, put war paint on, became an infiltrator.

First thing she should say on seeing rescue: "Where's the booze, Shepard!?"

After the big talk with the illusive man i chose to go and gather the rest of my crew before i attempted to acquire the reaper IFF

as you all know you meet a Geth towards the end of the mission and take him with you on to the normandy

but acquiring the reaper IFF set a few things into motion

most notably being the collectors boarding the normandy and abducting the crew once Shepard and the crew leave for a task or whatever

anyways when thats over with apparently then now its time to commence the suicide mission
i chose to not go right away and take care of some stuff around the ship
once the conversation is over with i appear back in the CIC and EDI informs me that

the geth is ready to be activated

so my question is

if i chose to acquire the reaper IFF earlier and hence get the geth earlier would that mean that he would have been part of my crew earlier too?
would i have been able to take him on other missions with me?
did i REALLY just beat 90% of the game without a member of my crew that i couldve had a long time ago? -__-

After the big talk with the illusive man i chose to go and gather the rest of my crew before i attempted to acquire the reaper IFF

as you all know you meet a Geth towards the end of the mission and take him with you on to the normandy

but acquiring the reaper IFF set a few things into motion

most notably being the collectors boarding the normandy and abducting the crew once Shepard and the crew leave for a task or whatever

anyways when thats over with apparently then now its time to commence the suicide mission
i chose to not go right away and take care of some stuff around the ship
once the conversation is over with i appear back in the CIC and EDI informs me that

the geth is ready to be activated

so my question is

if i chose to acquire the reaper IFF earlier and hence get the geth earlier would that mean that he would have been part of my crew earlier too?
would i have been able to take him on other missions with me?
did i REALLY just beat 90% of the game without a member of my crew that i couldve had a long time ago? -__-

please note that i haven't actually activated the geth yet

No. Getting the IFF will trigger a two-mission countdown. So to run around with your secret squadmate, you need to give up on your crew.

it's tough to be the little guy, it's even tougher when your whole species is the little guy

imagine us making first contact with aliens and they're bigger, stronger, live 25x as long, can reproduce with anything, and can naturally bend shit with their mind. our only advantage is having ADD, insomnia, and no sex drive.

back when the salarians were isolated they had athletes and bodybuilders, at this point why even bother? you better be good at math or you are worthless to the galaxy

look no matter how hard those salarians work they're never going to match up to the other species, that's just biology. nobody will hire a salarian bouncer over an elcor or krogan.

salarians are one of the few aliens I respect, but dang they're working off of nothing. they're not even that smart, they just process faster. some are straight up dumb like the Keeper scanner or Mordin's student. the 5 smartest characters are probably Mordin, Okeer, Legion, Liara, and Shadow Broker. just one salarian genius there.

That said, a salarian bouncer would just find out who was intending to come to the club that night the morning of, then discreetly dispatch them by spiking their breakfast cereal with all-day emetics or disabling their space car. Their actual door time would be uneventful, not even needing to look up from their Theory of Space Math.

Mass Effect 2 goes a long way to make Paragon Shepard not look like a pussy. Renegade Shepard needs no help to look like an overcompensating chump though.

Paragon Shepard is still a bit of a self righteous asshole of course.

Mordin's loyalty, f'rinstance.

I mean, he had a point. He was kind of an ass about it, but still

Mordin did help continue the Genophage, something that should never have happened. Mordin spends a lot of time dodging guilt over it, Paragon Shepard is just trying to get him to admit it.

Alright hot shot.

Pop quiz.

You're in Mordin's spot. What do you do?

Keep in mind, you will be graded.

If the galaxy is engulfed in civil war, you probably didn't get an A.

I will give you that part of the point was that there was no easy answer. At the same time, the Krogan had just fought a brutal war against the Rachni to protect all of the other races. It is extremely shitty to reward them with a disease that cripples their ability to give birth. I get the idea that the Krogan were kind of like orcs at that time, but they had just gotten a vested interest in working in the politics after fighting the Rachni War. The way I understood it diplomacy wasn't even tried, they just went straight to biological warfare.

After the big talk with the illusive man i chose to go and gather the rest of my crew before i attempted to acquire the reaper IFF

as you all know you meet a Geth towards the end of the mission and take him with you on to the normandy

but acquiring the reaper IFF set a few things into motion

most notably being the collectors boarding the normandy and abducting the crew once Shepard and the crew leave for a task or whatever

anyways when thats over with apparently then now its time to commence the suicide mission
i chose to not go right away and take care of some stuff around the ship
once the conversation is over with i appear back in the CIC and EDI informs me that

the geth is ready to be activated

so my question is

if i chose to acquire the reaper IFF earlier and hence get the geth earlier would that mean that he would have been part of my crew earlier too?
would i have been able to take him on other missions with me?
did i REALLY just beat 90% of the game without a member of my crew that i couldve had a long time ago? -__-

please note that i haven't actually activated the geth yet

No. Getting the IFF will trigger a two-mission countdown. So to run around with your secret squadmate, you need to give up on your crew.

Two missions does mean that you can get him loyal without sacrificing anyone, though.

Mass Effect 2 goes a long way to make Paragon Shepard not look like a pussy. Renegade Shepard needs no help to look like an overcompensating chump though.

Paragon Shepard is still a bit of a self righteous asshole of course.

Mordin's loyalty, f'rinstance.

I mean, he had a point. He was kind of an ass about it, but still

Mordin did help continue the Genophage, something that should never have happened. Mordin spends a lot of time dodging guilt over it, Paragon Shepard is just trying to get him to admit it.

Alright hot shot.

Pop quiz.

You're in Mordin's spot. What do you do?

Keep in mind, you will be graded.

If the galaxy is engulfed in civil war, you probably didn't get an A.

I will give you that part of the point was that there was no easy answer. At the same time, the Krogan had just fought a brutal war against the Rachni to protect all of the other races. It is extremely shitty to reward them with a disease that cripples their ability to give birth. I get the idea that the Krogan were kind of like orcs at that time, but they had just gotten a vested interest in working in the politics after fighting the Rachni War. The way I understood it diplomacy wasn't even tried, they just went straight to biological warfare.

I got the impression diplomacy was tried but didn't work because while the mutilated corpses of the negotiators were en route back to the Citadel the Krogan had invaded and slaughtered another x number of systems.

I mean yhe Krogans can't even stop killing each other long enough to deal with the fallout of the genophage (well unless Wrez manages it) and came from a society where whether or not one can do something is almost entirely decided by whether or not one can be stopped from doing it. I don't see negotiations working out.

Basically the history I got as that the Krogan were just flat out steamrolling systems and their defenses and until the genophage cut their endless supply of reinforcments there was pretty much jack and shit the council could do to stop them.

Now for awhile I did question how they had the infrastucture to sustain such an expansion but then I realized they were kind of the military arm of the council during and, I assume at least initially, immediately following the Rachni Wars so I guess they probably would have already been in control of a huge fleet of ships

From a certain standpoint you could view the Krogan rebellion as the military arm of the council rising up and attempting to take over.

An attempted military coup d'état might be closer I guess?

Much closer than the image "galaxy-wide civil war" conjures up, anyway. The fact that the genophage was so readily accepted pretty much proves it: it was everyone versus the Krogan. And the Krogan aren't exactly the type to have quietly infiltrated every institution in Council space.

Plus I'm sure that the Turians and Salarians have come up with a back up plan to bomb tutchanka to peieces again if something bad happens

Well, yeah.

Actually, come to think the most likely response is just Turians starting a purge.

Complete Krogan extinction.

Which, probably not the best thing for Krogans.

Mordin thought it all through, if you listen. Felt guilty, but couldn't think of an alternative. Calling him evil for it doesn't bring up anything he hasn't asked himself. Just you haven't bothered to run the numbers.

It's fairly apparent that the Krogan culture would prefer a bloody, painful obliteration over a few years/decades/however long to....a biological weapon they weren't even aware of until well after the fact. I can't say I blame them. But, at the same time, would there be any Krogan left?

From a certain standpoint you could view the Krogan rebellion as the military arm of the council rising up and attempting to take over.

An attempted military coup d'état might be closer I guess?

Much closer than the image "galaxy-wide civil war" conjures up, anyway. The fact that the genophage was so readily accepted pretty much proves it: it was everyone versus the Krogan. And the Krogan aren't exactly the type to have quietly infiltrated every institution in Council space.

I don't remember it being readily accepted. The codex entry on it itself mentions how controversial the decision was.

I'm not arguing that Mordin is a monster, and I don't think that was the point of Mordin's mission. even if the action is for a right reason, the action itself might not be right. And at the begining Mordin was pretty much in denial of the fact that it was a morally horrible thing to do. He comes around, and I think that was the idea Paragon Shepard was pushing for.

It also has the side affect that if the Genophage does ever get reversed, you have a bunch of pissed off Krogans upset about the fact that everyone just set by while horrors committed against them. It really didn't help relations with the Krogan at all, just repressed them from being able to continue to fight.

It's fairly apparent that the Krogan culture would prefer a bloody, painful obliteration over a few years/decades/however long to....a biological weapon they weren't even aware of until well after the fact. I can't say I blame them. But, at the same time, would there be any Krogan left?

(I'm assuming the Turians could, but I don't know myself.)

They'd hit as soon as the first genophage resistant Krogans became public knowledge. Not before they started expanding, maybe, but probably well before Krogans could take many worlds. And Turians would have orbital superiority something fierce. A few stolen pirate ships versus the biggest fleet in the galaxy means orbital bombardment.

And Turians, with the exception of Homo Sapiens have never left a foe able to fight. Official doctrine is to crush the enemy so thoroughly they can never cause you trouble again. And if the genophage is self curing, annihilation's the only play open by their standards.

Also, the genophage is finally working as intended.

Wrex, Okeer, the Shaman? Some folks are finally trying to change Krogan culture as a matter of survival. Every previous attempt to teach Krogans to play nice?

I'm not sure how effective orbital bombardment would be. Tuchanka is a wasteland, and the ME2 setting is representative of its clan centers: giant underground bunkers. Considering how long doomed surface-dwelling Alliance marines were able to survive turian terrorism, coupled with krogan hardiness, I don't think it'd be effective. Which, if I recall, is why they went to the genophage in the first place.

That's how I wonder about the effectiveness. The Krogans already obliterated all their cities--and then they got powerful. That's the opposite of part of the Turian strategy, from what I understand.

I get the feeling it would take a very long time to be thorough, and you'd still be left with a small number of Krogan who decided to lay low while the other 99% had the time of their lives, dying in glorious battle.